Now that they can no longer even competently define marriage, they need to get out of the business and turn it back over to the churches.
Unfortunately, the government must have a role in marriage, since child custody disputes must be adjudicated by the government. Try to imagine adjudicating such disputes without marriage records.
Moreover, marriage, i.e., a lifetime commitment between a man and woman for their mutual benefit, and the begetting and raising of children, is a natural institution. Families are the building blocks of society, and the State has a natural obliglation to regulate and foster them.
Many Christians mistakenly believe that marriage is a purely religious institution. It is not. But Christian marriage and natural marriage are different. Christian marriage can be sacramental, and its purpose is more noble than natural marriage. A Christian marriage is a lifetime commitment between a man and woman for the purpose of each attaining heaven, and the begetting and raising of children for the same purpose.
To be an Honest Libertarian, you don’t either support or condemn gay marriage, drug use, abortion etc..
You support taking those positions out of the hands of Government and let the people and States decide.
To be an Honest Communist/Socialist/Progressive, you must support the idea that people are too stupid to make their own decisions and the Government needs to decide for them.
To be an Honest Conservative, you need to support what true libertarians support but have faith that our fellow man is wise enough to erect social guardrails.
That is one of the great, stupid, and inaccurate remarks.
Government and or a controlling authority has always been involved in marriage.
destruction of the institution of marriage is their goal towards destroying society. Glenn Beck is on the wrong side.
I will never trust anything he says again
Pope Leo XIII warned about the dangers of state involvement 130 years ago:
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
That Leo XIII, what a raging pro-’gay marriage’ libertarian liberal. Bottom line is that the modern state’s definition of marriage is simply whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority thinks it is at any one time, and that’s all it ever can be. And if folks are conditioned to think the state defines marriage, then I reckon there must be a lot of folks that think ‘gay marriage’ is possible just because the state says it is possible.
FReegards